Standing in his boat, eyes squinting in the rising sun, Vu Thi Thinh spends his days picking up trash in Vietnam’s famous Ha Long Bay. Although it is barely nine in the morning, he has already accumulated a mountain of wrappers, plastic bottles, and beer cans floating in the calm waters. This debris is visible evidence of the human impact that has degraded this UNESCO World Heritage site, known for its turquoise waters and iconic limestone islets.
Thinh, a garbage collector for nearly a decade, complains of fatigue from picking up trash all day in the bay, barely resting. She makes five to seven trips a day to collect all the garbage. Since the beginning of March, a total of 10,000 cubic meters of garbage have been collected from the water, equivalent to filling four Olympic-size swimming pools, according to the Ha Long Bay administrative board.
The garbage problem has worsened in the past two months due to a plan to replace polystyrene buoys in fisheries with more sustainable alternatives. However, fishermen dumped the leftover buoys into the sea, exacerbating the problem. Although the buoys were a short-term hindrance, Do Tien Thanh, an environmentalist with the Ha Long Bay Management Department, acknowledges that the bay is under pressure.
Ha Long Bay is a popular tourist destination, with more than 7 million visitors in 2022, and the figure is expected to rise to 8.5 million this year. However, the popularity of the site and the rapid expansion of Ha Long City, with its luxury hotels and thousands of new homes, have caused serious damage to its ecosystem. It is estimated that there were approximately 234 types of coral in the bay, but now only half remain.
Although there have been signs of recovery, with a slow increase in coral cover and the return of dolphins in small numbers thanks to a ban on fishing in certain areas, debris, both plastic and human, remains a major concern. Litter generated on land still pollutes parts of the beach, despite a 90% reduction in the use of single-use plastic on tourist boats.
The plastic pollution crisis is a challenge in Vietnam, with 3.1 million tons of plastic trash generated each year and at least 10% of it leaking into waterways. The amount of plastic reaching the water is estimated to double by 2030. Visitors to Ha Long Bay, such as German tourist Larissa Helfer, admire its natural beauty but lament the problem of litter, which leaves a lasting impression. For those who have grown up in the area, like Thinh, the current image of the bay is sad compared to the past.